eMarketer Ratchets Up RTB Forecast, Slightly

eMarketer is estimating marketers will spend $3.34 billion on real time-bidded ads this year, representing a 73.9% increase from last year and a slight upward revision of an earlier estimate.

The researcher previously projected $3.32 billion in spend this year on RTB, due to “upward revisions in the overall digital display ad market.” Additionally, by 2017, RTB ad spend is expected to total $8.69 billion, up from the $8.51 billion previously forecasted this June.

“Advertisers, particularly those that have a stake in the game in terms of direct-response, have begun shifting money relatively quickly toward programmatic buys,” commented Clark Fredricksen, VP of communications for eMarketer. “I wouldn’t call [this uplift] unexpected, but we’re undergoing a relatively dramatic shift more-so from one type of display to another.”

Mobile display ad spending, similarly, is expected to grow to $3.81 billion this year, with upward growth of $14.5 billion expected by 2017. These estimates were up from the $3.38 billion and $13.04 billion, respectively, that eMarketer reported in June.

“Mobile, historically, is not a terrific direct-response medium and a lot of the interest in RTB is from performance advertisers, so, in some cases, it’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out because consumers do not spend as much [purchase-wise] on mobile phones as much as they do on desktop right now,” Fredricksen observed.

In terms of its research process, figures for eMarketer’s quarterly estimates are part of its overall US and worldwide ad spending benchmarks and forecasts package, Fredricksen said. eMarketer bases its estimates on analysis of company revenues, benchmark data from sources such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, research houses, consumer indexes and interviews it conducts with agencies, brands and publishers.